Is Synchrony a Missing Piece of Mental Health Treatment?
Synchronous activities with others turns off the inner critic.
Posted September 22, 2025 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk
We’ve all gone down those spirals where we can’t get out of our heads. Nothing we do feels right, we don’t feel that we look right, and we want to cancel all plans and never leave the couch. It feels like self-preservation: I don’t want to show myself to the world when I feel this crappy! It is the worst version of me. So we follow that instinct and burrow away—though there may be other solutions.
A novel branch of science shows us that to feel better, we should consider going out and doing things with others. It’s a well-worn trope in movies. Think "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off" or "Wedding Crashers." Friend gets sad. Friend disappears. The main character goes to Friend’s house, pulls back the curtains, looks at all the food and mess, and says, “Get dressed! We’re going.”
Researchers have found that when we do things in sync with others, it pulls us out of ourselves. Specifically, they measured the neural activity of participants while they spoke simultaneously with another person. They tested individuals speaking the same sentence versus different sentences and found that when they spoke the same sentence, the auditory cortex responded as if it were processing an external speaker’s speech. When we speak in synchrony with others, it doesn’t feel as if we are the ones doing the speaking. We step outside of our own perception and our own sense of responsibility for our actions, and become one with the group.
Organizations have been using this to their advantage for centuries. Consider the key role singing, praying, and dancing have played in religions, politics , and militaries worldwide. Dissolving into the collective strengthens our allegiance to the cause.
But we can use this science to support healing, too. When we are feeling especially self-critical and self-conscious, we are stuck in the default mode network (DMN), an automatic thought network that thinks it is keeping us safe by telling us all the things we are doing wrong, how we are not living up, or how we appear different. To get out of this network, we need to focus on something external to us. Doing a synchronous activity with others gives a one-two punch of benefits, given that it is an external focus that actively turns off the "me" pathways of the brain. A few things to try:
Next time you’re feeling down in the dumps and want to isolate, do it. Take care of yourself. Rest. But when you feel the isolation start to turn into a way of being, consider finding something synchronous to do. It can give you a respite from the inner critic and help you feel less alone. If it feels too hard, consider reaching out to a licensed mental health professional , who can walk alongside you. You’ve got this.
Jasmin, K. M., McGettigan, C., Agnew, Z. K., Lavan, N., Josephs, O., Cummins, F., & Scott, S. K. (2016). Cohesion and Joint Speech: Right Hemisphere Contributions to Synchronized Vocal Production. The Journal of Neuroscience: The Official Journal of the Society for Neuroscience , 36 (17), 4669–4680.
Koban, L., Ramamoorthy, A., & Konvalinka, I. (2019). Why do we fall into sync with others? Interpersonal synchronization and the brain's optimization principle. Social Neuroscience , 14 (1), 1–9.
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Betsy Holmberg, Ph.D., is an award-winning psychologist specializing in negative self-talk and overthinking.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.